Many of today's most pressing policy challenges are usefully characterized as wicked problems. With contested framings parties to a decision disagree not only on potential solutions, but on the nature of the problem they are trying to solve. The quantitative tools of risk and policy analysis, commonly designed to develop and compare choices within a single decision framing, are poorly designed to bring quantitative information into debates with contested framings. This study aims to build on recent advances in decision making under deep uncertainty (DMDU) to demonstrate methods and tools that may help resolve the tension between quantitative decision support and multiworldview approaches for addressing wicked problems. The study employs robust decision making (RDM), one common DMDU method, and a new version of the lake model, a simple and widely used model of a coupled human and natural system, to conduct a stylized analysis that reflects three different worldviews. The RDM analysis solves the decision challenge independently for each worldview and then compares each set of solutions from the vantage of the other worldviews. The resulting utopia–dystopia matrix informs problem reframing that seeks robust, adaptive strategies independently consistent with each worldview and thus provides a locus for agreement. The study describes how stakeholder engagements might use such analytic tools and their information products to provide overlapping but alternative entry points for groups with fundamentally different worldviews to engage with each other in deliberative processes appropriate for wicked problems.

This article introduces a new dyadic dataset measuring formal diplomatic relations. These data were coded from the Europa World Yearbook annually from 1960 to 2013 for 18,317 unique country dyads, and include the level of diplomatic representation (whether the diplomatic connection is focused on a single or multiple target countries) as well as a summary measure that captures both directed and shared dyadic level of representation. We compare the new data with data gathered previously by the Correlates of War project and find significant specific discrepancies in the period between 1970 and 1985. We then test the new data by replicating Neumayer (2008) generally validating those findings: distance, power, and ideological affinity each matter when sending and receiving formal diplomatic relations. However, using the new annual diplomatic representation data, we demonstrate a different relationship between power, affinity, and probability of diplomatic connection: dyadic foreign policy affinity is a more important driver of diplomatic exchange if both the sending and receiving countries have average relative material capabilities and matters little if one or both countries in the dyad are very powerful or very weak relative to previous model results.

Inclusive, participatory governance is a key enabler of effective responses to natural hazard risks exacerbated by climate change. This paper describes a community-level co-design process among academic, state, and federal scientists and the community of Sitka, Alaska to develop a novel landslide warning system for this small coastal town. The decentralized system features an online dashboard which displays current and forecast risk levels to help residents make their own risk management decisions. The system and associated risk communications are informed by new geoscience, social, and information science generated during the course of the project. This case study focuses on our project team’s activities and addresses questions including: what activities did the project team conduct, what did these activities intend to accomplish, and did these activities accomplish what they intended? The paper describes the co-design process, the associated changes in system design and research activities, and formal and informal evaluations of the system and process. Overall, the co-design process appears to have generated a warning system the Sitka community finds valuable, helped to align system design with local knowledge and community values, significantly modified the scientists’ research agendas, and helped navigate sensitivities such as the effect of landslide exposure maps on property values. Other communities in SE Alaska are now adopting this engagement approach. The paper concludes with broader implications for the role of community-level, participatory co-design and risk governance for climate services.

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